What type of service is AWS Shield Advanced?

AWS Shield Advanced is a paid DDoS protection service that provides enhanced security for applications hosted on AWS. It is designed to safeguard against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, which can overwhelm and disrupt web applications by flooding them with malicious traffic. This service offers advanced features beyond the basic protection offered by AWS Shield Standard, including real-time attack visibility, DDoS cost protection, and access to the AWS DDoS Response Team (DRT) for support during an attack.

The service automatically detects DDoS attacks and uses a combination of traffic engineering and anomaly detection to mitigate their impact, ensuring that the application maintains availability and performance even in the face of a DDoS attempt. AWS Shield Advanced is crucial for organizations that require an additional layer of security to protect their applications and must maintain business continuity.

This service's focus on DDoS protection distinguishes it from the other options, which address entirely different areas such as incident response, cloud storage, or application performance monitoring. These services do not specifically tackle the unique challenges posed by DDoS attacks, highlighting why AWS Shield Advanced is classified as a dedicated DDoS protection service.